Icon alpha-blending has taken some big steps forward today. First, Antonio Larrosa introduced alpha blending to the HEAD branch in CVS. Here's a screenshot showing one icon blended into another. A few hours later, Carsten Pfeiffer shot back with this tasty screenshot of Konqueror previewing text files with the mimetype icon blended in. Oh, I can't wait for 2.1 -- time to hit CVS! (screenshots below)

Since we all like to point out how stupid Windows is, Windows developers being envious is almost a sign you've made a mistake, not an advance :)

Also, from a usability point of view, I concurr with the text file contents comments. Icons are far more useful. After 15 years of recognizing files by their icons and names, its a step backward to try to identify files by the first 10 lines. Alpha blending is far more useful for terminals, disabled icons, cursors (I personally think the whole cursor should be blended ~ 80% with what's behind it.)

At any rate, its also a huge CPU suck until X supports alpha blending at a lower level, isn't it?